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How many eggs do the doctors take out for egg freezing?

Hi again,

Can someone tell me how many eggs the doctors will take out during egg freezing? I am talking with JayAtFertilityAuthority about the eggbanxx program and she mentioned a few options like number of cycles. Why would I need more than one cycle? How many eggs do they take out each time? Couldn't they just take them all the first time? How many eggs do I need to get pregnant later?

The number of eggs retrieved depends on how many follicles appear mature. Your doctor will monitor you throughout the cycle and will go in to retrieve the eggs with the most potential. You might need more than one cycle if you only get a couple of mature eggs on the first cycle. Really, that depends on your ovarian reserve and age. The younger you are, the better your ovarian reserve is likely to be, the more eggs you are likely to get per cycle. The fertility doctor can't take out all of your eggs because only a small percentage of the eggs in your ovaries actually stimulate per cycle. They also wouldn't want to aspirate immature follicles unnecessarily. I hope that makes sense!

Research has previously said you would need 12-15 eggs to achieve a pregnancy, but technology has gotten so good that doctors are saying they might only need 6 or so eggs to achieve a pregnancy. Isn't that amazing?! Anyway, keep chatting with Jay about EggBanxx and I am here with any questions you may have!

Hi JessMarie, how familiar are you with the process? When I did my cycle on Gonal F I had 11 mature follicles, they were able to retrieve 9 healthy eggs out of those 11. Some people were able to get up to 18 eggs and others only 3 or 4. I think it has a lot to do with how the meds work with your body.

Well, many answers to your questions depend on your individual situation. How many eggs are required, depends on your overall hormonal status, age and other factors. Women up to age 35 can expect a 50% chance that her eggs will be functional to make a baby. So anyone who is little older for baby making process, may require more attempts/cycles to retrieve functional eggs. The number of oocytes retrieved varies from woman to woman and may be anywhere from 0 to 45, depending on a woman's age and how the individual woman's body responds to the fertility medications.

During monthly ovulation, the body usually chooses ONE egg to ovulate. The rest of the eggs get reabsorbed in the body. As egg freezing’s purpose is to produce and freeze as many eggs as possible, stimulation drugs are required to produce a larger volume of eggs and inhibit ovulation. From each group of six eggs there will probably be one reasonable attempt at pregnancy, however, it is an estimate and again I repeat, it varies as per your response to medications.

I found info in a website of a clinic from Poland, they say: The average number of eggs collected at ******* Clinics ranges from 8 to 14. Depending on the woman’s age and its medical situation, the number of eggs eligible for collection varies. In the case of healthy women under 32 – the average number of collected eggs can even reach 12-18. The average number of collected eggs decreases with woman’s age

The extra cycles are only needed/recommended if you do not get as many eggs as you want. I would hope for as many eggs because you may need to use several for one healthy baby. You may then see how cute s/he is and want to make a little sibling!

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